And what if after the first few miles of smooth ground, it’s all mountains from there on out for the rest of the ten thousand mile journey? Well… if you haven’t trained adequately and brought the right supplies, you won’t survive the journey… it’s that simple.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any short cuts if you end up in this situation. You need to address your vulnerabilities before you can keep yourself safe and strong, and you may even need to backtrack quite a bit on the progress you’ve made under flawed assumptions.

For everyone, this realignment will be a bit different. In my sake, it’s a combination of a lack of financial stability, a lack of a connection with my local community, a lack of a connection with my extended family, and a heavy bias towards speculative work that can only pay off over the long haul, if at all.

To address those weak spots feels like wasted time, in a way. It feels like I’m abandoning my friends who are trying to keep going down the path using whatever they happened to bring along with them. It feels like I’m stalling or falling behind on my original roadmap. It feels, for the lack of a better word, like an act of cowardice rather than courage.

But I just need to trust my own sense of self-awareness, and overcome my sense of pride or bravado. There are many things in the years to come that I am woefully underprepared for. It is going to take a great many slow and seemingly mundane actions to fix that. But the best I can do, is pour my full energy into preparing myself better, so that when I do start moving forward again, I’m ready for it.

I hope if you’re feeling like you’re not ready for the years to come, that you consider doing the same. Retreat, repair, resupply, and then return! Don’t rush ahead unprepared, because that won’t end well–but do act with great urgency to get yourself moving forward again.